Mac Engel: Pitt's mistake with Jamie Dixon a lesson for others
Baylor, look at Pitt.
TCU, look at Pitt.
Texas Tech, look at Pitt.
Every school not named Kansas, Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky and a few others, look at Pitt right now.
Pitt happens when you get spoiled, and dumb.
The only reason former Pitt coach Jamie Dixon wound up back at his alma mater is because his employer grew bored, spoiled and entitled.
Pitt was in a perfectly good marriage with Dixon, only it was sure there was a better spouse elsewhere. Pitt's next marriage now looks like a desperate duo who dated for a few months and did it anyways.
Pitt's dissatisfaction with Dixon is the only reason he became available for then-TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte to make a run at the established Big East coach.
Two years after Dixon left Pitt for TCU, the Panthers are a perfectly fine mess, and the Horned Frogs are running toward their first NCAA Tourney since 1998.
TCU lost in overtime to Kansas State on Thursday in the Big 12 tournament, but the Frogs figure to make the big tourney, most likely as a six or seven seed.
Every school that grows spoiled with success and puts everything on the Final Four needs to look at Pitt and realize they might have it much better than they ever knew.
On Thursday, Pitt fired Dixon's replacement, Kevin Stallings.
In two seasons at Pitt, Stallings was 24-41. This season, Pitt was 0-18 in the ACC. The Panthers were the only major-conference team this season to finish without a win against a league opponent. The last time that happened was 1985.
Under Stallings, Pitt became an armPitt of basketball.
In fairness to Stallings, he should never have been hired. Pitt should never have allowed Dixon to leave, and then it should never have replaced him with a blah candidate from Vanderbilt.
Dixon's biggest sin at Pitt was never reaching the Final Four.
Dixon led Pitt to the NCAA Tournament 11 out of 13 seasons, multiple Big East titles, some Sweet 16 appearances and an Elite Eight.
And yet, two years ago, there was Pitt — agreeing to lower the buyout number on Dixon's contract, with the sole purpose to get him out. In TCU, Pitt had found their sucker.
Because the next guy was certainly going to be better than Jamie Dixon.
Unless you are Duke, Kansas, Kentucky or North Carolina, you never grow tired of the results Dixon had at Pitt.
Winning at jobs such as Pitt, Baylor, Texas Tech, TCU, Kansas State and so many others in college basketball is difficult in a way the respective fan bases refuse to admit. Attracting top talent to these destinations requires endless salesmanship, creativity and endless coaching.
If any Baylor fan is tired of head coach Scott Drew not reaching a Final Four, all they need to do is look at Baylor basketball's Wikipedia page. Other than NCAA sanctions and murder, the record stinks, too.
What Drew has done at Baylor is one of the more underrated rebuilds of any college basketball program.
Texas Tech might never reach a Final Four, but if coach Chris Beard does in Lubbock what Dixon did at Pitt, Chris Beard Avenue needs to happen.
With the necessary facilities in place, and the support of the university, Dixon walked into a situation at TCU where he knew he could win. And he has.
Former TCU coach Trent Johnson will never receive a lot of credit for what he did with this program, but he left Dixon a group of players that won the NIT title last season, and achieved countless milestones for this once irrelevant program.
In a few years, if Dixon has done at TCU what he did at Pitt, there should not be a hint of dissatisfaction from a soul.
Nor should there be any in 10 years.
There should only be celebration.
The NCAA Tournament is the pinnacle of the college basketball calendar, but the bracket we all love is also coaching suicide. Coaches are judged by what their team does in three weekends, max, and not the previous five months.
Don't forget to take the entire body of work into account, because if Pitt had done that, it would never have been dumb enough to escort Jamie Dixon to TCU.
